Not-Lucky Pair Grab Richest O.C. Lotto Prize

A few days ago, on her daily commute home from Rancho Cucamonga to Huntington Beach, Janice Richey noticed as always the sign beside the freeway advertising the California Lottery, which asks, “Who’s Next?” This time, she felt compelled to yell out the window: “Me.”

She was right, the tearfully excited Richey told television crews and reporters Thursday, the day she and her husband, Dennis, learned that their $31-million winning jackpot ticket is the richest ever in Orange County.

Insisting “we are not really lucky people,” Dennis Richey said the enormity of the news was just beginning to sink in. The 37-year-old aerospace mechanic said he and his wife, a 44-year-old customer relations director, had been struggling financially since she lost a job to corporate downsizing last June. She found a new job only three months ago.

“We have been staying above water, but just barely, he said. “Now we will be totally debt-free and the sky’s the limit.” Both Richeys already had called their offices and quit, he said.

“I won’t have to wake up to the alarm clock now,” he said.

Richey said that when he called Gulf Stream Aerospace in Long Beach, where he has worked for two years, his boss at first didn’t believe him and then jokingly tried to sell him one of the corporate jets the company makes.

Each year for 20 years, the Richeys will receive about $1.6 million, or $1.1 million after taxes. The first check will come in two to three weeks, said Herman Dustman, the California Lottery sales manager in Santa Ana.

The Richeys’ combined annual income before Wednesday had been about $70,000.

The couple said they aren’t regular players and hadn’t bought a Lotto ticket for about four months.

But Janice Richey said she couldn’t resist this time. At work Wednesday, she left a message on her home answering machine asking her husband or 20-year-old daughter to buy tickets. And later, uncertain that her message had been heeded, she gave an office co-worker money to buy five tickets.

When she got home, she learned that her husband had bought 10 Quick Picks at Warner Corner, a nearby liquor and convenience store. She said when she realized how much the family had spent on lottery tickets, she was appalled.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, $15,’ ” she said.

Just after 8 p.m., the Richeys turned on Channel 4 to read the winning Lotto numbers, which scrolled under a basketball game.

“45-46-15-42-18-25,” Dennis Richey recited with ease at Thursday’s press conference. “I’ll never forget those numbers.”

Janice Richey jotted down the numbers, then looked at their tickets.

“She looked at me and said, ‘Dennis, I think we just won,’ ” he said. While she gripped the ticket tightly, he ran across to neighbors to make certain there was no mistake about the winning numbers.

That night, the Richeys said, they signed the ticket and put it in a safe deposit box beside their bed. But they were too excited to sleep much.

On Thursday morning, when they contacted the lottery office in Santa Ana, the Richeys learned that they had the only winning ticket, and the jackpot was all theirs.

Asked what the family will do with the money, Dennis Richey said their 9-year-old son, Jacob, wants to buy computer games, and their daughter, Wendy, already was looking for a car.

“They are already spending it,” he joked.

The money will help fulfill a dream, he said.

“For a long time we have wanted to own our own home,” he said. They plan to look along the Orange County coast.

The win also brought joy to Lily and Bill Koh, who own the liquor store on Warner Avenue. When a lottery official called about 8:30 a.m. Thursday to tell them they had sold the winning ticket, Lily Koh cried.

Business has been slow lately, the Kohs said, and they will use the commission of $155,000--$111,940 after taxes--to pay bills and maybe visit her relatives in Vietnam and his in Korea.

Lily Koh said the store does a high volume of lottery ticket sales, and on Wednesday the line of customers was particularly long. A jovial Buddha sits on the counter next to the Lotto computer, and Koh encourages ticket buyers to rub his tummy for luck. One customer, she said, did win $500,000.

Koh, who also wears what she calls a “lucky Buddha” jade pendant and ring, said, “I pray every night when I close my store that my customer wins.”

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Big Winners

Here are Orange County’s top 10 lottery winners. Amounts in millions:

Date Amount Name 5/31/95 $31.0 Janice and Dennis Richey 12/16/87 25.1 Carlos Olvera 3/10/93 20.7 Lorenzo Cerezo 10/29/88 20.6 Ronald Smith 1/23/91 19.6 Rita Ussery 8/24/88 19.6 Christene Lentz 11/24/93 16.9 Mark Beeks 5/29/93 16.7 Milton Pederson 9/12/90 16.4 Ricardo Velazquez 10/29/94 15.5 John Green

Source: California Lottery